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Conservation The Best Solution To Sustainability Efforts In MENA – Says Expert | |
| Sumita Pawar |
A report stated that as governments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) implement sustainable policies to combat climate change and environmental challenges, an expert has disclosed that conservation would be a better solution to sustainability in a region where the essential commodity, water, is scarce.
According to the United Nations, the MENA region is home to 15 out of 20 of the world’s most water-scarce countries. The situation is predicted to worsen due to population growth, unsustainable water management, rapid economic growth, and ongoing conflicts.
The Gulf Corporation Council is one of the places that uses the most water in the world.
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Qatar has one of the highest water consumption rates, and in 2020, it reached 438 million gallons per day, while production capacity topped 476 million gallons per day, said the report.
Speaking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of the International Conference on Innovation and Technological Advances for Sustainability (ITAS), hosted by the University of Doha for Science and Technology (UDST), Prof. Belgacem Haba, Vice-President of Adeia Silicon Valley, USA, stressed that the region could contribute more to protecting resources and the environment if people were educated more about conservation.
Prof. Haba lauded Qatar’s sustainability strategy but urged the country to beware of air quality, especially as an oil and gas exporting country. He also said water conservation should be a priority.
"People try to be sustainable by changing energies, but the biggest one is conservation, which is better than sustainability because it costs less," Prof. Haba said, adding that preparing a world of young people who are knowledgeable of green technology and think critically would protect the future of the planet, as mentioned in the report.
"For every dollar you spend, you can conserve more. You can save more energy than you can generate.Conservation is an education problem, and we must educate people so that when they are in front of the faucet, they don’t leave the water running all the time. You don’t sit and enjoy yourself for two hours in the shower. There are many ways to do this, but we are not there yet," he added.
Prof. Haba talked about climate change and its effects. He said that both rich and poor countries would feel the effects, but poor countries might feel them more.He said the people are unaware of the dangers of some of their activities and will pollute more, making it too expensive for these countries to clean in the long run.
In the report, Prof. Haba talked about the fact that there aren't enough resources for the world's growing population, which has passed 8 billion.He added that the world is polluting more than before and that people need to be educated more on the dangers.
"We need to educate the population on how to be sustainable. We have to start early, though I believe we are already late. The land is not changing much, and we have to increase food productivity, which has to be good so as not to create diseases. So all these systems and cycles need to be addressed", he concluded.